“Why?” she persisted. “Why?”
She sidestepped the swipe of his short sword and brought her blade up to parry his dagger. He’d left an opening, but she didn’t take it, not wanting to kill him just yet. She needed information. “Who is Pobe, and what have we done to incur his wrath?”
Fisk grinned wide, and his black tongue darted out to lick his lips. “Pobe is the darkness, sweet Yevele. He is magic. He is the mortar of this Keep.” He rose up on the ball of his right foot and twirled, dagger out and clinking against the chainmail over her abdomen. “And he wants you dead because — ” He cackled and let her question go unanswered as he twirled again and skittered back, retreating from the torchlight and disappearing in the shadows.
“Why?” she screamed. “What have we done to him?’’
The two were-rats who’d been standing back rushed toward her now. She took one more look at Berthold, who appeared to have the upper hand on his winded opponent, then she charged to meet them, mindless of the shadows that could conceal a swarm of rats. She pulled her sword back and sucked in a deep breath.
“Why, Fissssssssk?” Her scream was long and her swing was fueled by anger, and the lead were-rat paid dearly for it. The sword sliced deep into his side, then she struck him again, blinking furiously when his blood spattered her face. He howled as he fell forward, and she drove the heel of her boot down on the back of his neck, snapping it. “Fisk! Talk to me! Now!”
The second were-rat hesitated, which proved his undoing. She brought her leg up, kicking him in the stomach and setting him off-balance. She kicked him again, and he dropped his dagger.
“You can’t win,” he said, trembling but making no effort to run. “Fisk will kill you and feast on your . . .” She grabbed the pommel of her sword in both hands and angled the blade down, raising it above her head and driving it into his chest.
“It is I who will win,” she said. “Can you hear me, Fisk Lockwood? I will find you and — ”
“The Master wants you dead simply because you live.” Fisk crept out of the shadows, looking a little more like a man, with his bald
head gleaming in the torchlight, but with rat fur covering the rest of him. “You must die because your presence poses a threat to his plans. Because though you don’t know how strong and important you are, you could well find out. He can’t aflord to let that happen.” His lace became that of a rat’s again in the passing of a few heartbeats. “Come dance with me again, sweet Yevele. You are always a woman to me.” His voice was hollow once more and sent another shiver down her back.
“All right, Fisk. I’ll dance.” Yevele moved toward the dropped torch and rocked forward on the balls of her feet. Behind her, she heard the clang of weapons parrying, the thief continuing to fight the remaining were-rat.
Fisk glided toward her, the hair on his arms receding and then growing back, his face shifting from rat to man, then back again, and all the while his tail wagging slowly. The constant transformation made her dizzy, as he continued to move, rising up on one foot and performing something like an arabesque. In that instant she thought he looked like the king rat from the Nutcracker ballet.
“A perverse King Rat,” she spat.
“What did you call me, sweet, sweet Yevele?” His eyes were switching now, from the larger round man-eyes to the solid, black tiny eyes of a rat.
“I call you dead, Fisk. We’ve just begun and already I tire of this dance.”
"Already?” He licked his lips and nodded. “Very well, then. But to your death, not mine.” He threw his dagger, and as she turned to avoid it, he slipped close and looked up at her. His breath was fetid and hot on her face, and she grimaced. “Your death.” He made a move to drive his short sword in, but the blade was pulled away.
“Didn’t you hear the lady?” Berthold was suddenly there. He pulled Fisk’s arm down, in the same motion bringing up his leg and cracking it against Fisk’s hand. The were-rat's short sword clattered against the stone floor. “She doesn't want you as a dance partner. You’re a little too short for her.”
Yevele locked eyes with Fisk then and pressed her sword to his stomach. "I normally prefer a fair fight,” she said, as she shoved the sword in. “But I’ve not the time for such chivalry now. Nor, in this instance, the desire.”
Fisk fell as she pulled the sword out, the rat fur melting like butter and leaving behind a naked, pale-skinned man. She looked around for his discarded robes and cleaned the blood from her face and weapon on them, tried futilely to wipe the blood off her chainmail.
"Are you all right, Berthold? ”
The thief was retrieving some of his scattered daggers. “Berthold?”
"No, I’m not all right. Scratched all over.” His face, neck, and the backs of his hands were crisscrossed with tiny scratches from the rats that had swarmed over him. “Aching. I’m thirsty and very hungry and tired. No, I’m not close to right. But I’m alive, and they’re not. So we won.” He took a few deep breaths, leaned over and put his hands on his knees. “No more fights, Yevele. I feel like I’ve maybe got a dozen hit points left.”
She offered him a crooked smile. "It’s not a game, remember?”
He rested a moment more, clearly favoring his side as he straightened his tunic. "Can’t find four of them. My best daggers.” He pointed to empty dagger sheaths. "Lost ’em in the bellies of those New York City-sized rats.” He padded toward Fisk and kicked the body. Then he picked up the wavy-bladed dagger and sniffed the oozy stuff that dripped from it. “Nasty stuff.” He dropped the dagger and pointed toward the darkest part of the cavern. Then he scooped up the torch on the floor. “Let’s get out of here, eh?”
Yevele took a last glance around the chamber and walked by Berthold, snatching the torch from him as she passed. He started to protest, but she cut him off with a glare.
"As you said, you’re not all right. And I’ve never felt better. Follow me.” The torchlight held the shadows back, revealing a wide doorway and another sloping hallway with more niches and jars.
Berthold tugged up his tunic and inspected an ugly mark on his side. One of the were-rats had bitten him there, the indentations from the teeth still seeping blood, all of it looking swollen and infected.
“It’s not a game,” he whispered. “Don’t let it be like the game, please God.” When a character got bit by a were-creature in the game, there was a chance the lycanthropy was passed along, like a cold or flu bug. He prodded the wound and winced. His skin was feverish there. There was no guarantee the disease would be transmitted that way, just a chance, he reminded himself. He might not turn into one of those were-rats. “This isn’t a game.” The trolls were different here, they didn’t come back from the dead like in the game, didn't have to be burned. “I’m all right,” he told himself. “I’ve never felt better.”
The chamber was growing dark, as Yevele had taken the torch farther away, and the broken torch somewhere behind him finally went out. He hurried to catch up to the battlemaid.
“I’ve never felt better either,” he lied again.
They walked side by side, not stopping this time to look inside any vases or jars, glancing occasionally at sections of the wall where flow-stone obscured the bricks, speeding up after the tunnel twisted back on itself and then angled down more steeply.
“Something in the air ahead. Can’t see it too well,’’ Yevele said.
“My eyes are a little better.” Berthold put a hand on her shoulder, getting her to stop. His narrowed eyes peered into the shadows ahead. He stomped his foot and shook his head. “The cavalry won’t be coming, Yevele.”
The battlemaid looked at him curiously and tried to see what he’d noticed.
"That little dragon, she didn’t find Naile and Milo. She didn’t even leave the Keep. Wonder how she got down here ahead of us?”
A heartbeat later, Alfreeta flew into view, her transparent wings shimmering in the torchlight, her tongue flitting across her lips and her wide eyes sparkling. The little dragon looked an
xious, and she glanced behind her and retreated down the tunnel, motioning with her head and tail.
“She obviously wants us to follow her,” Yevele said. She hesitated only a moment before doing just that.
“Just like Lassie,” Berthold muttered, prodding the wound under his tunic. "Timmy's fallen down into the well and we need to go pull him out.”
Behind them, in the dark chamber littered with the corpses of rats and were-rats, Fisk stirred. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the blackness, willing himself to be part rat again. He pressed his hands against the wound Yevele had given him and spat a gob of blood out of his mouth.
He laid there lor quite some time, until he felt the slice in his belly closing up and his breath coming even and stronger.
“Damn the woman,” he hissed. Fisk was unaccustomed to feeling such pain. “And damn the little thief who walks in her shadow.” He heard faint chittering, his surviving rat brothers returning and offering him succor.
For more than an hour, he remained still, feeling the welcome weight of the rats on his legs and chest, taking some of their strength and continuing to heal. Finally he rose, his head transforming wholly into that of a rat, his eyes now able to cut through the black and find the chamber walls. He fixed his gaze on the passage that led up into the higher levels of Quag Keep and followed that, a small wave of his rat-brothers scurrying behind him.
“I leave her to Pobe,” he told the rats. “She travels toward him now. And when she meets him . . . she will wish that she had died to my poison.” He began whistling the woman tune penned by the poet Joel.
TWENTY-SIX
Into the Labyrinth
Alfreeta led them down and down. Berthold guessed they were a hundred or more feet below the surface, though he had no way to truly know. He had passed the point of thinking there was an end to the Keep, and wondered if they were caught in some magical trap that would force them to walk through this maze until they dropped.
Alfreeta took them through several small chambers, one of which looked like a shrine to a foul god and had disturbing images on the walls that made them dizzy. Then they were at a wide, steep stairway, the first they’d seen since the spiral staircase beneath the carpet.
The steps were made of a different stone than the rest of the place, the edges sharp and showing no trace of wear. So it was perhaps of more recent construction, Berthold pointed out. The walls had less of the quivering moss on them, and there was no trace of flowstone. There were two smokeless torches halfway down the stairs, and Berthold snatched one.
"If we could take anything back with us,” Berthold mused, "I think I’d grab as many of these as I could carry. Sell ’em to one of those big campsites down by Paducah or Lexington or Louisville. Make a small fortune. Repel mosquitoes and—”
“Cells," Yevele announced, as she left the last step and disappeared around the corner. "Some sort of prison down here.”
“More like a corner of hell,” Berthold said. He waved his free hand in front of his nose. “Stinks worse than the were-rats. Than the trolls. Stinks worse than anything. And it's so dark down here, even with the torches.”
“Almost as if the walls drink in the light." Yevele stared down at small doors set in a line along the bottom. “Lots of things have died in here, Berthold. And from the smell of this place, it does not seem that any of the corpses were ever removed.”
Alfreeta led them through a half-dozen prison corridors, then down another flight of stairs. The smell did not let up. If anything, it worsened, and even the battlemaid was having a difficult time continuing, coughing, then gasping now and then.
“A lot more of that slime on the walls down here, Yevele. I don’t like this place at all. We need to go back. In fact—”
“Shhh. I hear something.”
“You hear my empty stomach loudly protesting this horrid place.” She cut him a cross look.
“Yevele?" The word sounded weak and came from behind one of the doors along the floor. “Yevele? Is that you?”
She crouched in front of a small wooden door. A heavy brass lock hung from a moss-covered latch. “Naile?”
"Milo! Yevele s here. Allreeta brought our cavalry after all.”
“I guess Timmy really did fall down into the well.” Berthold laid his torch near the corridor wall, careful not to let the flames touch the slime and moss and thereby possibly add to the stench of the place. Then he reached for his pouch of picks and tools. “Let me have a look at that.”
Yevele was quick to move out of the way, glancing right and left and listening to make sure nothing that passed for a guard was approaching. “Get them out of there, Berthold. Hurry. I do not like this place.”
The thief sighed and sat cross-legged in front of the cell. “Yes, ma'am." After a moment: “Quite a bit of magic in this lock and in this door. It’s hard to explain, but I can feel a sort of energy surrounding this. It’s going to take some time.’’
The battlemaid started tapping her foot as Berthold started worrying at the lock. At the same time, he worried over the deep bite mark on his side. He couldn’t risk looking at the wound right now —not with Yevele so close. But he felt where it was beneath his tunic and prodded it with his fingers again. It was sore, and he could feel the heat from it even through the material. He scratched it just a little, then forced himself to stop.
“Naile.” Berthold kept his voice low. “We fought were-creatures. They were men who could turn into rats.’’ He could hear Naile breathing behind the door, but the big man didn’t say anything. He decided to risk a question. “Naile, do you know how you became a were-boar?”
Naile snorted and gave a sad laugh. “Yeah, I picked up a miniature during a role-playing game, and I got sent here.’’
“No, I mean — ’’
“I’ve a false memory, Berthold, of being born to were-boar parents. Why?”
Berthold’s hands were shaking as he manipulated the lock. “There were just so many of them, the rat-men. Fisk Lockwood was one of them. Remember him? That Glothorio priest? Well, he’s not a priest. In fact, he led them. I wondered how there could be so many.”
“We found out Fisk was bad news, too. After you left for the Keep, he sent some bandits on us, got Ludlow Jade’s son killed. Jalafar-rula says Pobe — ”
“Who’s Jalafar-rula?" This came from Yevele, who was standing over Berthold. “And Pobe. Who’s he? Fisk mentioned a Pobe.” “Jalafar-rula is the wizard Berthold wanted us to rescue.” Berthold fumbled faster. “He’s in there with you? ”
Naile proceeded to explain about the Glothorio priests’ vision and their spell that sent him and Milo directly to Jalafar-rula’s cell. Yevele in turn regaled them with the tale of how she, Berthold, and
Ingrge reached Quag Keep and found Alfreeta, and about the battle with the trolls and were-rats. She left out the part about finding a big jar filled with gems and baubles, though it was obvious they would see the latter hanging around her and Berthold’s necks . . . provided the thief could open the lock.
“So Ingrge's hurt bad?” Naile’s voice was filled with concern.
“Very,” she returned. “I don’t know if he’s still alive.”
“We’ll find out,” Naile said. “As soon as Berthold gets us out of this dump.”
She nudged him with her knee. "Hurry.”
For the first time Berthold looked truly angry, and he jabbed her in the leg with his elbow. "Give me some room, Yevele. And I am hurrying. The lock’s magic. The door’s magic. And if I kill myself on either because I hurried, your friends will never get out of there. They’ll rot just like the other prisoners who are stinking up this place. And you'll be left to your lonesome in this hell-hole.”
She backed up and looked down at him, her raised eyebrow showing her surprise at his reaction. Sorry, she mouthed.
He returned to work on the lock. “Hot in here,” he mumbled. "He felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead and trailing down into his eyes. He didn’t bother to wipe the
m off. His hands were sweaty, which made his task even more difficult, and he finally wiped his palms on his leggings. The material was practically shredded in places, from the rats that had swarmed him. Even the smallest cuts were itching. The bite mark on his side was itching fiercely. "Hot as Bowling Green in the middle of August.”
Alfreeta perched on his shoulders, beating her wings, the movement of the air cooling him a little. She stayed that way for a long time, not seeming to tire, swiveling her head nearly all the way around to watch Yevele, who had started to pace behind Berthold.
"Can you stand still, Yevele?” Berthold was terse. “All that clicking from your heels is distracting. If you have to pace, do it somewhere else. And quit making that huffing sound. You being impatient isn’t making this go faster.”
She stopped a few feet away and found a relatively clean spot of wall to lean against. Sorry, she mouthed again. Sorry. Sorry.
Alfreeta wrinkled her nose, offering the battlemaid a sympathetic expression. Then she hovered above Berthold’s shoulder, shimmered, and flew through the door to visit with Naile.
The thief settled back to work a kink out of his neck, took a deep breath. After a few more minutes he tugged on the padlock. It came unhinged, and he removed it from the latch. “Not so fast, ” he warned Yevele, who was instantly behind him again. “There are tiny runes all over the wood here. See?” He pointed with his finger. “Hold the torch for me so I can see better. Not too close. It’s hot as all blazes in here." He registered that she wasn’t sweating, then he wiped his hands on his shredded leggings again and started picking minute pieces of brass inlay out of the wood, in much the same manner a dentist would work plaque off a tooth.
Much later, or so it seemed, the thief rolled his shoulders, scooted back from the door. He got to his feet, stretched, and refused to utter the groan that was building in his throat. Replacing his picks and tools, he stuck the pouch in his belt. "Should open,” he told her.
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